Unilever steps up speed of change

Expansion in emerging markets is among the priorities for chief executive Patrick Cescau

UNILEVER’s revamped building, suggested chief executive Patrick Cescau, is rather like a metaphor for the company as a whole.

“On the outside, it’s the same Unilever  solid, reassuring, listed even. But inside, the light is allowed to come in and the partitions have been taken away.”

He smiled as he said it, but you could see his point. Inside, the head office certainly feels very different from the claustro-phobic, art deco design that preceded it: there is glass everywhere and high-tech lifts glide up and down a bright atrium.

And he is right, Unilever has changed. It is still the company known for household staples such as Flora margarine, Persil washing power, Dove soap and Hellmann’s mayonnaise. But its internal workings are different.

Over the past two years, as Cescau said, the internal shape of Unilever has fundamentally altered; fiefdoms have been broken up; the corporate arteries have been cleared.